No abstract

Wavelength-selective thermal emitters (WS-EMs) are of high interest due to the lack of cost-effective, narrow-band light sources in the mid-to long-wave infrared. Cost-effective WS-EMs can be realized via Tamm plasmon polariton (TPP) structures supported by distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) on metal layers, however, optimizing TPP-WS-EMs is challenging because of the large number of parameters to optimize.To address this challenge, we use stochastic gradient descent (SGD) to optimize TPP-WS-EMs composed of an aperiodic DBR deposited on doped cadmium oxide (CdO) plasmonic films. While the SGD-optimized, aperiodic DBR offers extensive spectral control, the material choice, i.e., plasma-frequency-tunable doped CdO, enables the design capabilities not accessible with noble metals. Here, the individual layer thickness and carrier density of CdO are optimized by our SGD inverse design strategy. The resultant experimental designs demonstrate TPP-WS-EMs exhibiting isolated, high-Q (narrow bandwidth), and structures featuring multiple emission bands for applications such as free-space communications and gas sensing. Furthermore, we illustrate the deterministic design capability within the infrared, such as user-designated Q-factors (28 -10,127) at a desired frequency, multi-band emitters with user-defined Q, and the ability to directly match arbitrary chemical absorption spectra. Thus, the combination of our SGD inverse design and the broadly tunable plasma frequency of CdO enables lithography-free, CMOS-compatible, and wafer-scale solutions for WS-EMs with unprecedented spectral control.

CdO has drawn much recent interest as a high-room-temperature-mobility oxide semiconductor with exciting potential for mid-infrared photonics and plasmonics. Wide-range modulation of carrier density in CdO is of interest both for fundamental reasons (to explore transport mechanisms in single samples) and for applications (in tunable photonic devices). Here, we thus apply ion-gel-based electrolyte gating to ultrathin epitaxial CdO(001) films, using transport, x-ray diffraction, and atomic force microscopy to deduce a reversible electrostatic gate response from −4 to +2 V, followed by rapid film degradation at higher gate voltage. Further advancing the mechanistic understanding of electrolyte gating, these observations are explained in terms of low oxygen vacancy diffusivity and high acid etchability in CdO. Most importantly, the 6-V-wide reversible electrostatic gating window is shown to enable ten-fold modulation of the Hall electron density, a striking voltage-induced metal–insulator transition, and 15-fold variation of the electron mobility. Such modulations, which are limited only by unintentional doping levels in ultrathin films, are of exceptional interest for voltage-tunable devices.

Optical fields can be concentrated to length scales far below the diffraction limit through the excitation of propagating and localized surface plasmon polariton (SPP) modes. [1] These hybrid modes are the result of strong coupling between light and free electrons in doped semiconductors or metals and possess modal dispersions extending far beyond the free-space light line. Establishing methods to control the polaritonic dispersion of these lightmatter excitations has been of great interest as the nonzero group velocity (v g ¼ ∂ω ∂k ) and high confinement make SPPs useful for a broad range of nanophotonic applications including thermal emissivity control [2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and sensing, [9] surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), [10][11][12][13][14][15] as well as in-plane nano-scale waveguiding. [16,17] The carrier tunability of the plasma frequency in doped semiconductors and transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) offers considerable control over the optical properties of these materials both during film growth [18][19][20][21][22] and through active modulation. [23,24] However, while this offers a mechanism for achieving some control over the SPP dispersion within the IR, the spectral dispersion

Wavelength‐selective absorbers (WS‐absorbers) are of interest for various applications, including chemical sensing and light sources. Lithography‐free fabrication of WS‐absorbers can be realized via Tamm plasmon polaritons (TPPs) supported by distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) on plasmonic materials. While multifrequency and nearly arbitrary spectra can be realized with TPPs via inverse design algorithms, demanding and thick DBRs are required for high quality‐factors (Q‐factors) and/or multiband TPP‐absorbers, increasing the cost and reducing fabrication error tolerance. Here, high Q‐factor multiband absorption with limited DBR layers (3 layers) is experimentally demonstrated by Tamm hybrid polaritons (THPs) formed by coupling TPPs and Tamm phonon polaritons when modal frequencies are overlapped. Compared to the TPP component, the Q‐factors of THPs are improved twofold, and the angular broadening is also reduced twofold, facilitating applications where narrow‐band and nondispersive WS‐absorbers are needed. Moreover, an open‐source algorithm is developed to inversely design THP‐absorbers consisting of anisotropic media and exemplify that the modal frequencies can be assigned to desirable positions. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that inversely designed THP‐absorbers can realize same spectral resonances with fewer DBR layers than a TPP‐absorber, thus reducing the fabrication complexity and enabling more cost‐effective, lithography‐free, wafer‐scale WS‐absorberss for applications such as free‐space communications and gas sensing.

Wavelength-selective thermal emitters (WS-EMs) are of high interest due to the lack of cost-effective, narrow-band light sources in the mid- to long-wave infrared. Cost-effective WS-EMs can be realized via Tamm plasmon polariton (TPP) structures supported by distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) on metal layers, however, optimizing TPP-WS-EMs is challenging because of the large number of parameters to optimize. To address this challenge, we use stochastic gradient descent (SGD) to optimize TPP-WS-EMs composed of an aperiodic DBR deposited on doped cadmium oxide (CdO) plasmonic films. While the SGD-optimized, aperiodic DBR offers extensive spectral control, the material choice, i.e., plasma-frequency-tunable doped CdO, enables the design capabilities not accessible with noble metals. Here, the individual layer thickness and carrier density of CdO are optimized by our SGD inverse design strategy. The resultant experimental designs demonstrate TPP-WS-EMs exhibiting isolated, high-Q (narrow bandwidth), and structures featuring multiple emission bands for applications such as free-space communications and gas sensing. Furthermore, we illustrate the deterministic design capability within the infrared, such as user-designated Q-factors (28 − 10,127) at a desired frequency, multi-band emitters with user-defined Q, and the ability to directly match arbitrary chemical absorption spectra. Thus, the combination of our SGD inverse design and the broadly tunable plasma frequency of CdO enables lithography-free, CMOS-compatible, and wafer-scale solutions for WS-EMs with unprecedented spectral control.